I first blogged about 9 back in May after catching both the trailer and the original short film on YouTube. I finally got to see it at the cinema last night and it did not disappoint. I would rank it up with the best example of CGI animation I have ever seen and the story - although seeming quite short - was engaging and pertinent.
Essentially, 9 is a reworking of that ever-popular SF trope - man vs. machines. It seems that the fear of a 'technological singularity' heralding the point humans will be superseded by their mechanical creations is increasing rather than diminishing, even as we become more and more engaged with technology on a personal level in everyday life. Briefly, a selection of miniature creatures awake in an apocalyptic world from which mankind has been erased during its war with a vast army of robots. The creatures - mechanical/ragdoll hybrids - make their way to safety in the dead world and try to avoid a menace known only as 'The Beast'.
When '9', the last of these creatures, awakens, he challenges the logic of the others, hiding from rather than tackling the Beast head on. While his willfulness and bravery win out in the short-term, a much more dangerous entity is disturbed as a result of his actions.
image from http://www.filminfocus.com/article/images_from_9_1Machinarium is a 'point and click' adventure game by Czech indie developers Amanita Design available on Windows/Mac/Linux. Head over to their site and try the demo for free. The full version costs £11.73 - this includes the rather stunning sountrack as an additional MP3.
Machinarium is an enthralling experience. The player character is robot dumped from a aircraft landing scattered across a junkyard strewn with mechanical waste. After reassembling your avatar, the game takes you into a polluted, mechanical, citadel populated by various other robots. Your mission is to save the city, and your robot girlfriend - from the machinations of the dastardly Black Cap robots you encounter soon after entry into the city.
Machinarium screenshots (Machinarium 2009)One of the most incredible aspects of this game is the way that the narrative is delivered without recourse to language - written or spoken. Instead, the story unfolds visually and audibly through thought balloons, atmospheric sound, and the non-diegetic score. Even the help manual - which I have had to resort to on more than one occasion - is composed of images or symbols rather than words (and the fun sideways shooter you are compelled to play to gain entry to the help manula is another little twist that makes this game so good).
9 and Machinarium have much in common. Most obviously the portrayal of an apocalyptic post-human landscape of junk and pollution, hence the JunkPunk of this post's title. Ray Kurzweil has already referred to the 9's characters as 'stitchpunk' creations in an article he wrote for Film in Focus, emphasizing their material components. However, disputing these kinds of distinctions is part of a larger concern I have with the vast majority of Steampunk inspired texts being classified out of the still nascent genre (diesel, sandal, stitch, junk, candle, elf etc etc). My opinion is that there has always been exceptions to any rigid categorization of what is and is not Steampunk, even from the beginning. For instance, The Anubis Gates (Powers 1983) is often cited as being one of the genre's formative works, but I'll be damned if I can locate a recognisable steampowered machine within its pages.
I am much more interested in what works like 9 and Machinarium share with Steampunk. While the temporal locale is not specifically Victorian - 9 being post-apocalyptic and Machinarium occupying a fantasy space - neither are the locales of various other texts I certainly count amongst the Steampunk corpus...Casshern (2004), Perdido Street Station (Mieville 2000), City of Ember (2008). What counts are the themes imported from the more traditional Victorian aesthetic. In the case of 9, the fears over the mechanisation of society and the fusion of occult practices with Tesla devices; in the case of Machinarium - the almost Dickensian characterization of the criminal enemy NPCs along with overt observations of technological obselescence inherent in its mise-en-scène.
As far as I'm concerned, and many people will disagree, 9 and Machinarium make welcome additions to the Steampunk fold, while remaining unique in their own individual ways. That's how genres function. They evolve or they die. And Steampunk is, I'm happy to report, alive and kicking.
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